FinMin Citu: We have expense increase and income drop. 2020 deficit is raising significantly

Finance minister Florin Citu announced, on Monday might, at the end of the government meeting, that an increase of expenses and income drop are registered during this period of time, and that means this year's deficit will grow significantly. “A significant deficit increase means a much more complicated financing. Our role is that of making sure people receive pensions, salaries, unemployment compensation in due time, but it does not mean it will be easy. That is why in this context we are looking at a re-evaluation of budget expenses for the entire year,” he said.

He declared that at the government meeting he presented the first budget rectification this year.

“Most funds will go to the Health Ministry and Labor Ministry. For the Health Ministry there are more expenses for hospitals, but I want to clearly mention that we will increase the budget for the payment of medical leaves by at least one billion lei. As for expenses which we have already announced with technical unemployment and other air forms, we have supplemented funds by at least 7 billion lei to make sure that for the period of emergency state and the extended period of the emergency state funds are there, that people get the money quickly,” the finance minister said.

He pointed out that that the budget effort was a big one in that period of time. “A significant budget increase means a much more complicated finance. Our role is that of ensuring that people receive pensions, salaries, unemployment compensation in time, but that does not mean it will be easy. That is why, in this context, we are looking at a re-evaluation of budget expenses for the entire year. We will soon have a conclusion and some back with this information,” Citu said.

He made appeal to companies to pay incomes and contributions to the budget, while the government will send the money to the economy.

“For the income part, I said and repeat it, companies which have activity today and want to pat incomes and contributions to the budget should do it because we will send back to the economy this money very quickly. We will continue to do that even in April when we return VAT, but if we do that effort, the other side will have to bring incomes, so we could continue to maintain this money circuit in economy to maintain company activity,” the finance minister said.